Guy at the shop that I took to today said his opinion it’s the water pump. Which I’m doubtful. I did show the pump to a different service shop and he said it was perfectly fine. But I’m gonna pull it off again and show it to him. I’ll try a new pump. It’s cheap.
He said nothing to worry about the small metal chunks. It’s normal.
He said he didn’t think it was coming from inside the engine. He said very unlikely it’s that spring or valve.
You get what you pay for…
Shops loose money dealing with free estimates, the ones that do it are hoping /planning on you paying them to do the work they recommended, so if you go home and take the water pump off and take it back to them and waste their time again, you might get a surprise verbal expression on how to do an impossible act to yourself while being asked to leave the property…
Would you go to work for a full 8-12 hour day and be happy when your boss asked you to work part of those hours for free??
Me thinks that one of these annoyed shops is going to reach a breaking point and just offer $200.00 for this vehicle and then sell it to a salvage yard for $300.00 and be done with this .
OMG just get rid of the thing already !!!
I think your idea to just install a replacement water pump is the best choice. With a little luck that may totally eliminate the annoying noise. I believe you’ve removed the current water pump and given it a bench inspection, then re-installed it b/c there wasn’t anything obviously wrong. But it is probably quite difficult to differentiate a perfectly working water pump from one that is slightly on the fritz without doing a test replacement. Suspect wheel bearings are often the same by the comments here. Nothing us found by standard shop wheel bearing tests, but replacing it with a new one on a flyer solves the noise symptom. When an experienced mechanic says it sounds like a water pump problem, suggest to believe them.
Note: It’s possible the water pump is good, but there is debris of some sort circulating in the cooling system that is interfering with the impellers. Calcium deposits, etc. Be sure to do a thorough cooling system flushing as part of the water pump job.
To not much surprise to me. A new water pump didn’t do anything. I did not clean the cooling system. I read that after putting it on. But it has a nice clean green look to it.
I’m just gonna have to drive it like that and make sure I have AAA come fall. The engine does run beautifully as it is